Busy but Stalled

I've been missing in action around these parts lately. I accompanied DH on a business trip last week to Skamania Lodge in the Columbia River Gorge. (we were there last September too - see this post) I had a wonderful vacation. . . while DH worked! All the wives that were there did some sightseeing together, and had a good time. However, I hardly touched a computer the whole week. I was just too busy. On the way home we stopped for a short overnight visit with my sister. That was fun, but way too short.

Since getting home, I've been trying to catch up on things, including sleep. We both got over-tired last week. "Too much fun", as DH says. Ha! Is there such a thing? And the kitties are very needy right now. . .they're always traumatized after a week in the kennel, especially Shade. (The lady at the kennel said she never saw him outside of his carry-crate.) So I have to spend a lot of time with them right now. And the allergies this year are really getting to me.

But I do have some things to show. I managed to get some sewing done before I left.

First is a charity quilt that I made. My guild is making quilts for seniors in wheelchairs, so the quilts don't have to be real big. My friend in CA sent me some patterns that she had gotten as free handouts from a speaker at her guild (Pat Fryer of Villa Rosa Designs), and this one was just exactly the right size. I tried to use only stash for this one (it calls for fat quarters), and did pretty good. But, I forgot to make sure I had enough for the border and the binding. I managed to use one of the fat quarters (that was really a regular quarter yard) for the border (without piecing it!), and I found something at the LQS that works great for the binding. So, this one cost me $4 and change! Woo hoo! I'll be making the back and binding, and then passing this on to someone else to quilt, as lots of the ladies in the guild have long- or mid-arms.

I made some very-belated Christmas presents for my sister. I haven't seen her since last October, so this was our first chance to exchange our presents. (We're always running a little behind) Anyway, this is the Humbug Bag. This is the largest size. I decided to use batiks, inside and out, because she loves them. I left her ribbons long so that she can add some beads to the zipper pull. These are fun. I hope you can tell from the photo that these are a fun shape and really easy to do. They're flat in one direction on one end, and flat in the other direction on the other end. Nice and roomy inside for storing things too.

This is the smaller Humbug Bag (hand included for size comparison). It fits inside the larger Humbag bag. I used some Asian-style fabric for this one, 'cuz she loves anything Asian. This one has an "antique" zipper that I found in my stash of zips. It's an "Invisible" zipper . . . can you even find these anymore?? I had a few technical problems with this (don't have the correct foot anymore), but it finally worked. I wouldn't recommend using the Invisible zipper for this again.

I made some pillowcases for my granddaughters' birthday presents. I was thrilled to find the "Brown Bear" fabric, as it had been the oldest girl's favorite book for a while. I'm not sure they were as thrilled with it as I was. I didn't use the trim piece this time, but used some rickrack instead. I think it's fun!

These pillowcases were supposed to be Christmas presents, but I couldn't make them after my accident. So, they became birthday presents instead. I had to pay attention to the fact that the designs on these fabrics ran lengthwise, so had to cut lengthwise instead of widthwise. After almost 30 years of sewing, I'm finally learning to recognize this!

When I visited my daughter in January, I discovered that she was using some potholders that were probably older than her! And they weren't very effective either. So, I had to make her some new ones. I found these garlic and mushroom fabrics on a field trip, and they were perfect as they're her favorite ingredients!

I made three potholders for her. One is the garlic with the rusty dot fabric, one is the mushrooms with the brown square-dot fabric and the last one is garlic on one side with mushrooms on the other. So, I had to show all the permutations.

Hopefully she won't be burning her fingers now!

Finally, I am slowly making progress with my Liberated Amish Challenge quilt. I've gotten all the 9-patches made. I got wonkier as I went, which was really fun.

This was a photo to help me decide which fabric to use for the alternate squares. The 9-patches are just kind of thrown up on the fabric to test the color. The final configuration will be a little different. This is a Cherrywood fabric in midnight blue. I have 2 yards of it, which would be enough if I were doing a straight set, but I think I'm going to set my blocks on point. After much painful math (never my strong suit), I've determined that 2 yards isn't enough for the center and the border. So the border will be something different. But I'm liking how this is shaping up. Now I get to play with my 9-patches and figure out my layout for them.

Hopefully this will happen soon! I've only got about a month to get this one done. Then I have a challenge quilt for my guild that needs to be done by July. Because I took a week and more off, I'm feeling behind. I went into the quilt studio last night, and couldn't even decide what to do. So all I managed to do was to trim some crumb blocks down to size. That's not even an active project. It didn't help that Studio Cat wanted to be in my face the whole time. So, I've got to get focused. Sheesh.

*The Chicken Quilts*

Due to the huge demand (tongue in cheek here), here are all the wonderful chicken quilts from the Quilter's Anonymous show in Monroe, Washington that I attended a few weeks ago. I took these pictures mainly for my daughter, who is missing her chickens (and their eggs) that she had to give up when she moved to an apartment.

My alignment in this post is all wacky. I can't get it to behave, so we'll be going back and forth from the middle to the left side apparently.

Pride Goeth Before The Fall by Elaine Colvin

I much prefer chickens on quilts or on the grill to real ones. I think the real ones are pretty, and I love eggs, but they're scary to me!

You should probably know that I'm a suburban girl, born and raised. I love cats and dogs and other pets, but have a hard time understanding livestock of any kind. I'm mostly scared of all that I've met. I love meeting them and watching them, but that's about all the interaction that I'm really comfortable with. Well, except for my daughter's milk goat. Hazel was a real sweetheart and let me pet her and feed her. I think the feeding was a big help in the "liking me" department!

At this quilt show there were fancy chickens:

A Country Journal by Linda Tellesbo

This is a pattern by Maggie Walker. After looking at her web site, I discovered she has a lot of chicken patterns, all of them beautiful. She must love chickens!

There were starry chickens:

CHIC(ken) Quilt by Cindy Shivley

My daughter kept chickens for awhile. When I visited her, she tried to get me to pet her chickens, but I declined. They didn't seem to like me too much. The roosters even tried to peck my toes (I was wearing sandals at the time). I had to carry a stick to keep them away from my toes!

There were silly chickens:

Chicken Buffet by Carolann Palmer

I did like feeding the chickens the food scraps every day. They seemed to like me better then, for some reason. But it was short-lived. Apparently, chickens have a short memory. Did you know that? It was a surprise to me.


There were dancing chickens:

Tra-La Tra-La Dancing Chickens by Leanna Olmsted

I had a run-in with a rooster at my father-in-law's place once. Everybody else was gone fishing or something, and I went out to look at the chickens who were in a big pen. One of the roosters had gotten entangled in one of the plastic things that 6-packs of soda come in. So, I decided to help the poor rooster get free. I went into the pen. That was when I learned that roosters don't really like help from humans. Especially ones that they don't know and that know nothing of the ways of roosters. I managed to get out of the pen in one piece without letting any of the chickens out, but it was touch and go for a few minutes. I really didn't care if that rooster lived or died by the time I got out of that pen! By the way, they peck really hard with their sharp beaks.


There were chickens in the cornfield:

Nine Ol' Hens by Donna Myers

I tried collecting eggs while at my daughter's. For some reason, she thought I should stick my hand into the nesting box while the chicken was in it. It was dark and I had a flashlight, but there was no way I was getting that familiar with an unknown chicken! She called me a chicken!


There were more starry chickens:

Classy Chix by Judy Irish

This is a Buggy Barn pattern.

There were funky chickens:

This wild little chicken was on a quilt, and I didn't get the name of the quilt or the maker. I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but his/her feathers on the head and tail are just strips of fabric. The legs are 3-D as well.


There were frantic chickens:

Helter Skelter Chickens by Janet Goad

I love the "fried egg" flowers on this one!


There were even more dancing chickens:

Dancing Chickens by Elaine Colvin

There were even some other birds there:

Ole Crow by Marian L. Floyd

My daughter has also raised 6 turkeys. One the first year, and 5 the next year. The first year's turkey's sibling died early on (very common, I understand) and the remaining turkey poult (baby) became bonded to my daugher. Her name was Lady Zany Wobbledy-Gobbets. Zany was a very smart turkey, and had an impressive vocabulary. She followed my daughter everywhere on the property, knew enough to peck on the sliding glass door when she was hungry, and even bonded with a pregnant mare next door to avoid the chopping block on her first Thanksgiving! I never knew turkeys could have such a personality. Oh, and she didn't like me either. And she was really scary, because she was so big! (She weighed at least 35 pounds by her second summer.)

Which brings me to the other poultry quilt in this show:

Whidbey Island Turkey by Lisa Halter


Lisa took a picture of a turkey, and then turned it into a quilt!




I hope you've enjoyed all the chicken quilts!

Quilt Show Part 2

Here are the rest of the quilt photos from the Quilter's Anonymous quilt show in Monroe, WA.

Key Lime Pie by Wendy Stone

This was done in a class with Sandy Bonsib, using her pattern. I just love the colors in this one. . . fresh and juicy!

Paws on the Road to Innovation by Leona Broers

This was one of the guild's challenge quilts. They had to use a particular fabric, and also had to re-work a traditional block pattern. I believe the challenge fabric is the red-orange in the upper right block.

Purple Passion by Linda Ostroff

This center panel is wool applique.

Convergence Quilt by Julie Robbins



Giant Poppy by Michaelinda Kaestner

There were a lot of silks in this one. . . it just glowed.

Still Open to Discussion: Shark Teeth, Dinosaur Backs or Electric Storm by Elaine Colvin

I love the title of this quilt!

Super Nova by Kathi DeJong



Christy's Bandana Agenda by Alayne Pettyjohn

Do you ever go to a quilt show, and find that you're drawn to all the quilts by one particular person? That happens often to me, now that I'm making a point of noticing the names of the artists.

This quilt show had A LOT of chicken quilts. They even had a special section for most of them. Let me know by leaving a comment if you'd like to see the chicken quilts. . . I can do another post with them if enough people are interested. Personally,I liked the chicken quilts. They had a lot of whimsical humor in them. And I really like whimsical.

Quilt Show Part 1

As promised in my last post, here are the photos from the quilt show I attended last week. Actually, this is just Part 1. There were too many pix to put them all in one post. This installment I'm featuring all the Liberated-type quilts.

I went to Monroe, WA for the Quilter's Anonymous quilt show. It was a big show with lots of drop-dead gorgeous quilts. I didn't take any photos of those quilts . . . . I knew I couldn't do them justice with my less-than-professional photo taking skills. I still tend to cut off the tops or the sides of the quilts, and I can't always get a good angle with all the people in the way. So please excuse my poor photos, and I hope you'll still enjoy the quilts anyway!

Corduroy House Medallion by Dorothy LeBoeuf 41" x 40"

This quilt was made at the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat with Gwen Marston in Sept. 2009. Dorothy chose corduroy for this for texture because she couldn't use any print fabrics. It did have a wonderful texture. I hope you can tell from the photos.

This was all machine-pieced and machine quilted.

Georgia Tulips by LeeAnn Decker

Each block of this quilt is quilted in a different pattern. What fun!

This block's quilting was my favorite! I love the string tulips too.

Half-Log Cabin in Vintage Fabrics by Dorothy LeBoeuf

For some reason, I didn't get all of this quilt in the photo, and now I'm kicking myself!

Look at these great fabrics. Dorothy said these were from a friend's 40-year stash!

The back of the quilt, with more vintage fabrics.

Hawaiian Zig Zag by Dorothy LeBoeuf

This was made with thrift store Hawaiian shirts. I love the colors in this one, especially that little zing of orange!

This was an improvisational piece that was in the quilts for sale. I didn't see the maker's name, unfortunately. I like the buttons on this one.

A wonky block tablerunner, that was also in the quilts for sale. The label was done so low I couldn't even see how much they were asking for this.

That's it for now. I'll post more photos soon.

A Virtual Retreat

Did you know that last Saturday, apart from being the first day of Spring, was International Quilt Day? What did you do to celebrate?


I had a very busy, quilt-y weekend for my celebration. On Friday I went to a Quilt Show with two friends. It was a beautiful show, and I'll be sharing some pictures in a future post.


Saturday the Liberated Quilters Yahoo Group had a Virtual Quilt Retreat. I retreated with them for the first time. I wasn't sure quite what to expect from a virtual retreat. I cleared my schedule, cleaned the quilt studio (that was a big deal!) and was ready to go. I warned DH that I wouldn't be available that day.


I decided that my Liberated Amish Challenge was the perfect project to work on for the retreat. On Saturday morning I had 8 9-Patches that I started with. By 2 pm, I had another 8 done! That's where I was in the picture up above.

I wasn't too thrilled with the 9-patches I had already done. They weren't wonky enough. So I got wonkier. I even tried an insert (bottom right block). Not too sure that the contrast is all that good on this one, but I'm not letting myself re-do any of these. None of these blocks have been trimmed to their final size yet. I needed to see what sizes they came out before I got too carried away with trimming.

I worked all day Saturday, with meal breaks, until about 10 pm that night. Sunday I got off to a slow start, but again, worked all day. By the time Sunday night rolled around, I had 34 9-patches done! DH was a real trooper....he made all the meals on Sunday so that I could get more sewing in. He's a great guy! I love that he's so supportive of my quilting.

I discovered an easy way to be wonky....just get confused and sew the rows back together wrong. That block still met the size requirements so I left it. One block didn't make the grade, and I ripped that one and re-sewed it. I started running out of fabric, and so started cutting the squares with scissors. The first two blocks I made that way worked great. The next 3....not so good. Two got put into the Parts Department and one got extra fabric sewn to it to be the right size. Can you find it in the above photo? I got pretty wonky by the end of the retreat, and I'm really happy with my blocks.


I finally couldn't stand waiting to see how they would look. I trimmed 4 blocks to their finished size and sewed a big block together. I like it! Just for reference, here's my Amish inspiration quilt.

I have 14 more 9-patches to make, and then I can start putting this quilt together. I'm hoping I won't lose too much momentum this week and that I can get them all done. That would be great!

I found two funny cat videos to share with you. This one shows a cat with a static cling problem, and this one shows a cat that's got a great dunk. I love a funny cat video....hope you do too.


One more thing to share.....


The Silly BooDilly is sharing some of her latest pincushions, that are related to her Work Quilts she's made lately. Go take a look....her stitching is beautiful and quite inspiring.

Is It Spring Yet?

Bunny is hoping it is! I've pulled out a little quilt that was on the very bottom of my box of little quilts. I haven't seen it in 3 years! It looks so Spring-like to me.

I stencilled this quilt to match the plaid fabric in it. I fell in love with this plaid when it was used in some quilts on display in my LQS many years ago. I only bought a yard of it, and have used it a couple of times. I even have a few scraps left of it. Anyway, I did a demo on stencilling and needed something to show that was finished. I hand-quilted this one. Unfortunately, this is soooo pastel that it doesn't photograph really well.

Stencilled Baskets 20 inches by 25 inches

Here's an overall photo of it. Not quite true colors, I'm afraid. It's hard to get good photos in this house, and we even had sunshine today! The sun washed the colors out even more. *sigh* The first photo is probably closest to true color, because I took that one outside.


A closeup of the stencilling.

I've been doing some sewing lately, but nothing I can show yet. Some of it is a secret and some of it is not finished enough to show.

One project I'm working on, I was hoping to use some scraps. This kind of snowballed on me, and I ended up spending all last Sunday sorting 3 boxes of scraps and then getting the quilt studio back together after I made a huge mess finding the boxes of scraps. Here's what the family room looked like in the middle of it:


All the stuff on the coffee table was sorted by color, and the stuff on the sofa was other catagories.

I got rid of 3 boxes in the quilt studio, and gained 3 bins! This all needs to be ironed and cut up into Quiltville's Bonnie's Scrap User System. This looks like a LOT of ironing and cutting! But I think, until I get it all done, I can find scraps easier.

Do I have too many scraps?? Some of these are relatively recent and some are old friends and I'm saving every little scrap because I love it so much. Mind you, this is about 25 years worth of quilting scraps. I guess I really have to admit that I'm a fabricholic! And I need to make more scrap quilts!

So, tell me, how many scraps do you have? And what do you do with them? Come on, 'fess up!

Papa Bin, Mama Bin and Baby Bin! hee hee!